Georgia, with its long history of black voter suppression, has been ground zero for fights over voting rights laws for decades. The state has often seen stark disparities in turnout between white and non-white communities, with the latter typically voting at a much slower rate.

But not always: In the 2012 election, when Barack Obama won a second term in the White House, the turnout rate for black voters under 38 in Lowndes County—a Republican-leaning county in south Georgia—was actually four percentage points higher than the turnout of black voters under 38. rate for white voters of a similar age.

It turned out to be temporary. Turnout for younger white voters in Lowndes was 14 percentage points higher in 2020 than for Black voters of the same age, according to new research from Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO.

What happened in between? It’s impossible to say for sure because there are many variables, including the fact that Obama is no longer on the ballot.

But a growing body of evidence points to a pivotal 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, that overturned a core part of the Voting Rights Act. The court effectively struck down a provision that required counties and states with a history of racial discrimination in elections — including all of Georgia — to obtain permission from the Justice Department before changing voting laws or procedures.

The result was a slew of laws that imposed restrictions on voting, such as limiting voting by mail and adding voter identification requirements. (One new provision in Georgia, which prohibits most people from providing food and water to voters waiting in line within 50 yards of a polling place, was featured on a recent episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”)

Connecting the dots

For years, political scientists and civil rights leaders argued that the Supreme Court’s decision would lead to a resurgence of suppression of historically marginalized voters because local and state governments, many in the South, would no longer need federal permission to change voting laws and regulations. Two new studies support that theory.

This month, research from the Brennan Center found that the gap in turnout rates between white and nonwhite voters “grew nearly twice as fast in previously covered jurisdictions as in other parts of the country with similar demographic and socioeconomic profiles.”

In other words, the turnout gap tended to grow fastest in areas that lost federal control after 2013.

Podhorzer’s research analyzed turnout at the provincial level. He found that the growing disparity in racial turnout since the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby was felt most acutely by younger voters across the country.

These are trends that worry Democrats when it comes to areas like Lowndes, home to Valdosta State University, with more than 12,000 students.

Podhorzer discovered that older voters are more resistant to voting changes because they have developed a fixed voting behavior. But it is much more likely that younger or new voters will be discouraged or prevented from voting.

It is “a kind of generational replacement, with older and established voters maintaining their voting habits, while new restrictions hinder younger voters,” Podhorzer said in his report, which will be released this weekend.

In Bulloch County, Ga., Winston County, Miss., and Newberry County, S.C., the racial turnout gap among young voters grew by 20 percentage points or more between the 2012 and 2020 elections. In each of these counties, the gap for both Gen X and even older voters has never grown by more than 11 percentage points.

Emergence in 2024

The youth vote in November will be critical, especially for President Biden. He won 60 percent of voters under 30 in 2020, as exit polls show, an important part of his coalition. But the 2022 midterm elections saw that a downward trend in the youth vote, and young voters have expressed exasperation with the president heading into this year’s elections.

A caveat: Using turnout to assess the impact of changes in voting laws is an imperfect assessment at best because it does not take into account other motivating factors, such as close races or polarizing candidates. It also ignores aspects of the cost of voting, such as the time it takes.

Seeing a more substantial racial turnout gap among young voters goes against some conventional wisdom about recent changes in voting laws. Political experts have often argued that limiting access to mail-in voting or reducing the number of polling stations is likely to impact older voters, who are often less mobile.

But Bernard Fraga, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, noted that seeing a wider racial turnout gap among young voters was “fairly consistent with the previous literature on who should be most affected by these types of laws.”

“For populations that have historically been disenfranchised or less likely to vote, small changes in voting bills can have a much larger impact,” Fraga said, “because they are less resilient to this type of oppression. ”

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In a lively Supreme Court Argument On Wednesday, the justices returned to a thorny issue that was certainly on their minds three other times: When can people sue over arrests they say were motivated by retaliation for criticism of the government?

The general rule is that the existence of probable cause for the arrest is sufficient to preclude lawsuits seeking retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch said this was a recipe for abuse, allowing for politically motivated arrests. “How many statutes are on the books today, many of which are virtually never enforced?” he asked. “Last I read, there were over 300,000 federal crimes, counting statutes and regulations.”

“They can all sit there unused,” he added, “except for one person who claims that I was the only person in America ever prosecuted for this because I dared to express an opinion protected by the First Amendment.”

In the court’s last encounter with the question, in Nieves vs. Bartlett in 2019, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s majority opinion recognized. a small exception, where he used the example of jaywalking. “At many intersections, jaywalking is endemic, but it rarely results in an arrest,” he wrote, adding that there may be circumstances in which someone arrested for that crime could be charged for retaliation.

“If an individual who has complained vociferously about police conduct is arrested for jaywalking,” he wrote, “it appears to be insufficient protection of First Amendment rights to dismiss the charge of retaliation to arrest the individual for on the grounds that there was undoubtedly probable cause for the arrest. .”

How do I know when this exception applies? The prosecutor must, the chief justice wrote, “present objective evidence that he was arrested when similarly situated persons who did not engage in the same types of protected speech had not been.”

Wednesday’s case, Gonzalez v. Trevino, No. 22-1025, tested the limits of that exception. It involved Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old city council member in Texas who was arrested in 2019 for losing a piece of paper after criticizing the city manager.

It happened not long after Ms. Gonzalez won a surprise victory to become the city’s first Spanish-speaking council member. Her first official act was to help gather signatures for a petition calling for the city manager’s removal.

At the end of a council meeting, Ms. Gonzalez gathered the papers in front of her and put them in a folder. The petition was among them.

A two-month investigation followed. At the end, Ms. Gonzalez was arrested for concealing a government document, a misdemeanor.

The district attorney dropped the charges, but Ms. Gonzalez, who said she found the episode traumatic, resigned from her position. She sued, saying the arrest was in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights.

Ms. Gonzalez, represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group, said she had the kind of objective evidence of retaliation that Chief Justice Roberts required. Her attorneys had reviewed a decade of data from her county, they wrote, and it was “clear that the tampering statute has never been used to charge someone with a common and boring offense of putting a piece of paper in the wrong stack.”

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that wasn’t enough. “Gonzalez provides no evidence of other similarly situated individuals who mishandled a government petition but were not prosecuted,” said Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote for the majority.

Several judges seemed uncomfortable with such a strict standard. After all, it’s one thing to show that no one else has been arrested for what Ms. Gonzalez did. It is another thing to prove that others lost pieces of paper and were not arrested.

The questioning suggested that the court might make a narrow ruling for Ms. Gonzalez, sending the case back to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration under a more relaxed standard.

“You should be able to say that they have never charged anyone with this type of crime,” Judge Elena Kagan said, “and I don’t need to look for anyone who has engaged in the same behavior.”

But Chief Justice Roberts said Nieves’ decision was limited. “The court’s opinion in that case went out of its way to emphasize the narrowness of the exception,” he said.

Anya A. Bidwell, an attorney for Ms. Gonzalez, said a narrow interpretation of the exception would lead to troubling results.

“If the mayor in this case were to appear before TV cameras and announce that he was having Ms. Gonzalez arrested because she was questioning his authority,” Ms. Bidwell said, “the existence of probable cause would make this evidence legally irrelevant to make. ”

Lisa S. Blatt, an attorney for the defendants, urged the court to maintain the status quo and warned that the alternative would trigger a flood of lawsuits.

“Throughout history,” she said, “probable cause has precluded retaliation arrests. Nieves created one small exception for warrantless arrests, in which officers typically look away or issue warnings or tickets. This court should not blow up that exception.”

The Supreme Court decided unanimously Tuesday in favor of a Muslim man who said he was placed on the no-fly list in retaliation for refusing to become a government informant. The court rejected the government’s claim that removing the man from the list had made his case moot.

The no-fly list, which was quickly expanded after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to include tens of thousands of people. The criteria for inclusion on the list are opaque, allowing for errors and misuse.

Yonas Fikre, a US citizen, challenged his inclusion on the list, saying it violated due process and amounted to discrimination based on race, national origin and religion.

The legal proceedings are in their early stages and Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the court, said it was necessary to assume that the following version of events outlined in the lawsuit was true.

Mr. Fikre, who lived in Portland, Oregon, had moved to Sudan from his home country of Eritrea as a child. In 2009, he traveled back to Sudan in search of a consumer electronics company in East Africa.

When he was invited to lunch at the U.S. Embassy, ​​he was confronted by FBI agents, who told him he had been placed on the no-fly list and could not return to the United States. They questioned him about activities at a Portland mosque, asked him to act as an informant and said they would take steps to remove him from the list if he agreed.

He refused. Weeks later, during a trip to the United Arab Emirates, he was arrested, detained, interrogated and tortured. After 106 days, he was flown to Sweden, where he lived until 2015, when the Swedish government returned him to Portland by private jet.

The following year, the government told Mr. Fikre that he had been removed from the list. It provided no explanation but argued the move made its lawsuit moot.

Judge Gorsuch wrote that defendants cannot automatically moot a dispute by “the simple expedient of suspending the challenged conduct after it has been charged.”

Instead, he wrote, citing an earlier decision, “a defendant’s ‘voluntary cessation of a challenged practice’ will only raise a case if the defendant can demonstrate that the practice ‘could not reasonably be expected to will repeat itself’.”

Judge Gorsuch wrote that it remains possible that the government will place Mr. Fikre back on the no-fly list. “The government could reinstate him,” the judge wrote, “if he does the same or similar things in the future — for example, visiting a particular mosque or refusing new overtures to serve as an informant.”

Justice Gorsuch added: “What matters is not whether a defendant repudiates his past actions, but what the repudiation may prove about his future conduct. “We base our judgment on that consideration alone – the potential for a suspect’s future behavior.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, delivered a brief concurring opinion. It stressed that “our decision does not suggest that the government should release classified information to Mr. Fikre, his lawyer or a court to demonstrate that this case is moot.”

Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a brief support from Mr Fikrewelcomed the decision.

“For decades,” she said in a statement, “rights groups have documented the secrecy and unfairness of the no-fly list program and its devastating impact on people’s lives, yet the program has remained a black box. Not only are people left in the dark about why they were listed, they are also given no meaningful explanation when they are removed, or any assurance that they will not be wrongly listed in the future.”

Former President Donald J. Trump the Supreme Court urged Tuesday to rule that he is absolutely immune from criminal charges stemming from his efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot maintain its vital independence,” the letter said, “if the President faces criminal charges for official acts as soon as he leaves office.”

The letter, Trump’s most significant submission to the justices before the case is heard on April 25, continued to push for an expansive understanding of presidential immunity, an understanding that the report said was required by the structure of the Constitution itself.

“The issue of a former president’s criminal immunity raises serious constitutional questions that go to the heart of the separation of powers,” the letter said.

Legal experts said Trump was unlikely to prevail, but added that how and when the court rejects his arguments will essentially determine if and when Trump’s trial, which had been scheduled to begin on March 4, will continue.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last month, it set a so-called accelerated timetable. But it did not move particularly quickly and culminated in oral arguments some seven weeks later, on April 25. That delay marked an important partial victory for Mr. Trump.

Even if the court were to then move with considerable speed and issue a categorical decision against Mr. Trump within a month, the trial would most likely not begin until the fall, well into the heart of the presidential campaign. If the court does not rule until the end of June or sends the case back to the lower courts for further investigation into the scope of any immunity, the trial cannot take place until after the elections.

If Mr. Trump wins the election, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, it said it would decide this question: “Whether, and if so, to what extent a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct incidental to official acts while in office to go.”

That sentence has been scrutinized. On the one hand, Mr. Trump’s argument that his acquittal at his second impeachment trial, on charges of incitement of insurrection, blocked any prosecution on similar charges appeared to be ignored. (Fifty-seven senators voted against him, ten short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.)

On the other hand, it seemed to leave open the possibility that the court would distinguish – or ask lower courts to do so – between official acts and private acts.

Mr. Trump was sharply critical of a ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which unanimously rejected his argument that he might not be prosecuted for actions he took while in office.

The appeals court panel, made up of one Republican and two Democratic appointees, said Trump has become an ordinary citizen in the eyes of the criminal law after leaving office.

“For the purposes of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive branch immunity that may have protected him while he was president no longer protects him from this prosecution.”

When the case was argued before the appeals court, a lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that former presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution, even for assassinations they ordered while in office.

In the new letter, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said the court should be wary of approving prosecutions of former presidents. “Criminal prosecutions pose a deadly threat to the independence of the presidency,” they wrote, adding that a contrary ruling could lead to the prosecution of President Biden.

“Is President Biden destroying our southern border and undermining our national security abroad for unlawful election purposes?” the boy asked.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump, elaborated on his arguments a short filed at an earlier stage of the proceedings, citing its attempts to undermine democracy.

If Trump’s “radical claim were accepted,” Smith wrote, “it would upend the understanding of presidential responsibility that has prevailed throughout history while undermining democracy and the rule of law—especially when, as here, a former president would be accused of committing crimes to remain in power despite losing an election, thereby attempting to undermine constitutional procedures for the transfer of power and disenfranchising millions of voters.”

Mr. Smith added that there is no reason to fear prosecutions that would prevent other presidents from taking decisive action.

“That dystopian vision runs counter to the checks and balances built into our institutions and the framework of the Constitution,” Mr. Smith wrote.

The White House spokeswoman on Tuesday lashed out at the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas to enforce its own restrictive immigration law, predicting it will make Texas communities less safe and “create chaos and confusion at our southern border.” will sow.”

Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the Texas law is “just one example of Republican officials politicizing the border” and she called on Republicans in Congress to vote for border security legislation that has already passed with bipartisan support in the Senate, but is deadlocked in the House.

“We fundamentally disagree with the Supreme Court’s order to enact Texas’ harmful and unconstitutional law,” she said.

The Texas law, known as SB 4, is the latest in a series of clashes between Texas and the Biden administration amid a surge in migration that has led to record numbers of people trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state authorities not to allow federal Border Patrol agents into a park along the border in Eagle Pass, Texas. The governor installed razor wire to discourage migrant border crossings, but it was later broken by federal agents following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And he has ferried migrants across the country in an effort to force liberal cities to address the issue.

President Biden’s administration has repeatedly attacked the governor for his actions at the border, accusing him of overstepping his authority and making it more difficult for the federal government to handle the situation. Mr. Abbott has fired back, saying the president is failing to secure the border.

For Mr. Biden, gaining control of the border has become a central issue in his re-election campaign as he faces former President Donald J. Trump in a rematch in November.

Mr. Trump has helped block congressional legislation that Mr. Biden supports by criticizing it as weak and ineffective. Mr. Biden and his top immigration advisers have said the administration needs the policy changes and billions of dollars for enforcement and immigration processing to improve the situation.

Reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision, which allowed a controversial immigration law to take effect in Texas, reflected the country’s deep partisan divides on immigration policy. Within minutes of the order on Tuesday, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated on social media, calling it a “HUGE WIN.”

The Biden administration opposed its introduction Senate Bill 4law that allows police officers in Texas to arrest unauthorized migrants, described the measure as “harmful and unconstitutional” and disagreed with the court’s order.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the law is “just another example of Republican officials politicizing the border while blocking real solutions.”

“SB 4 will not only make Texas communities less safe,” she said, “it will also burden law enforcement and sow chaos and confusion at our southern border.”

The law, passed by the Texas Legislature, makes it a crime to enter the state from a foreign country at anything other than a legal port of entry. In siding with Texas, the court continued its conflict with the Biden administration, which has challenged the law as an unconstitutional intrusion on the federal government’s power to enact and enforce immigration laws.

Senate Republicans, who earlier this year rejected the tough border security restrictions they themselves had called for, took a triumphant tone on social media after the ruling, saying on X that the court had allowed Texas to do President Biden’s job – enforcing border security laws – “because he refuses to.” They declared victory for “those who believe in the rule of law and secure borders.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, responded with a more measured response, citing the appeals process but still saying that “this is clearly a positive development.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio, said the court had undermined his credibility and called the law “an alarming state overreach” that could lead to civil rights violations across Texas.

“At a time of rising anti-Hispanic violence, this law puts a target on the back of anyone perceived by law enforcement as an immigrant,” Castro said in a statement. “While we await the final ruling from the Supreme Court, I will do everything I can to help Texans understand their rights and navigate the dangerous climate that Governor Abbott and Republicans have created.”

J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval And Adam Liptak reporting contributed.

The appeals court that allowed an aggressive Texas immigration law to take effect with a one-sentence order without any reasoning has a reputation for making decisions that are too conservative, even for the Supreme Court, which itself has been tilted to the right by a court of six. majority of Republican candidates.

But the Supreme Court has let that order, which overruled a judge’s decision to block the law, stand for now, indicating it won’t hear the case until the appeals court issues something more formal than a “temporary administrative stay ”. The fate of the law, known as SB 4, remains uncertain as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans often falls out of step with the justices.

In dissent, Judge Sonia Sotomayor addressed the appeals court on Tuesday. “The Fifth Circuit abused its discretion,” she wrote, “and this court makes the same mistake by granting a temporary administrative stay to change the status quo that has existed for more than a century.”

She added: “The Fifth Circuit should have considered the constitutionality and irreparable harm caused by SB 4 before enacting the law. Instead, it opened the door to profound disruption. This court is making the same mistake.”

Of the seventeen active appeals court judges, only five were appointed by Democratic presidents. Six members of the court were appointed by Donald J. Trump when he was president.

The court hears appeals from federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. These forums often elicit ambitious lawsuits from conservative litigants who rightly anticipate a favorable reception, and rulings by judges in those states are often affirmed by the Fifth Circuit.

But when those cases reach the Supreme Court, they sometimes fizzle out. An attack on the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, endorsed by three Trump appointees in the Fifth Circuit, did not appear to go down well with the justices when it was debated in October. Another, in which the Fifth Circuit struck down a federal law banning domestic abusers from carrying guns, was also met with skepticism.

Other Fifth Circuit rulings, on issues such as immigration, abortion pills and so-called ghost guns, also met with at least cautious disapproval from the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily sided with Texas in its increasingly bitter battle with the Biden administration over immigration policy, putting into effect a sweeping state law that makes it a crime for migrants to enter Texas without permission.

As is usual when the court deals with urgent requests, the order was not motivated. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, filed a concurring opinion that appeared to reflect the majority’s premise.

They sent the case back to an appeals court for a quick ruling on whether the law can take effect while an appeal is pending, Judge Barrett wrote. “If a decision is not made soon,” she wrote, “the petitioners may return to this court.”

The court’s three liberal members — Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented.

“Today the court invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement,” Judge Sotomayor wrote. “Texas passed a law directly regulating the entry and removal of non-citizens and explicitly directing state courts to ignore pending federal immigration proceedings. That law undermines the federal-state balance of power that has existed for more than a century, in which the national government has exclusive authority over the entry and removal of non-citizens.”

The court’s order addressed only one aspect of the clashes between the White House and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who has launched a multibillion-dollar campaign to deter migrants, including by erecting razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande and a barrier of buoys in the river.

The surge in the number of migrants entering the United States has intensified a fraught battle over immigration policy, underscoring deep divisions between and sometimes within political parties. It led to House Republicans’ impeachment of the secretary of Homeland Security and the failure of a bipartisan deal in the Senate to increase border security.

The Texas law, known as SB 4, gives state courts the authority to order the deportation of migrants who enter the state without authorization and gives local law enforcement agencies the authority to arrest those who unlawfully cross the southern border. The administration, civil rights groups and El Paso County have challenged the law, saying it would hamper the federal government’s power to set immigration policy and manage foreign affairs.

In 2012, indoors Arizona v. United States, the Supreme Court approved broad federal power in those areas by a vote of five to three.

“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration” as the federal government tries to address them, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

The court’s composition has changed since then, and officials in Texas are hopeful that the current justices will change the balance of power between the federal government and the states on immigration.

In a file at the Supreme CourtTexas said its law differed significantly from Arizona’s. But if the justices disagreed, the filing said, “Arizona must be overruled because it violates both statutory and constitutional text, structure, and history.”

Judge David A. Ezrain federal district court in Austin last month has taken an interim measure blocking the Texas law, saying the plaintiffs would likely win for several reasons. “Over a century of Supreme Court cases,” he added, recognized that the Constitution gave the federal government the dominant role in addressing immigration.

Judge Ezra, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, rejected Texas’ argument that its law was authorized by a clause in the Constitution that prohibits states from making war “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as to require delay is not possible.”

He gave three reasons. According to him, unauthorized immigration is not an invasion. Enforcing state law does not constitute war. And even if both of those things were true, Texas “would have to adhere to federal guidelines.”

Texas asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to block Judge Ezra’s ruling and allow the law to take effect while the appeal is heard. A divided panel of three appeals court judges did so almost immediately, without stating reasons. The appeal will be heard on April 3.

The panel gave the plaintiffs a week to seek relief from the Supreme Court. After the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who oversees the Fifth Circuit, extended the appeals court’s brief stay so the justices could consider the case.

In the emergency request from the administrationAttorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the Texas law amounted to “interference with the nation’s ability to speak with one voice in international affairs” and would “significantly harm the United States’ relationship with Mexico.”

She added that the law would “fundamentally disrupt the federal immigration regime, allowing a single state to make unilateral decisions about unlawful entry and removal.”

In answerTexas said it “has the sovereign right to defend itself against violent transnational cartels flooding the state with fentanyl, guns and all forms of brutality.”

In January, another emergency request from the Biden administration was heard by the Supreme Court authorized federal officials to cut or remove portions of a barbed wire fence along the Mexican border that Texas had erected to prevent migrants from entering the state.

But that ruling, by a vote of 5 to 4, was only an interim victory for the government.

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that federal appeals courts can review many rulings by immigration judges on whether deporting someone would, in the words of a federal statute, result in “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a family member lawfully in the United States.

The vote was 6-3, with the majority made up of an unusual coalition: the court’s three liberal members and the three justices appointed by President Donald J. Trump.

The case involved Situ Kamu Wilkinson, born in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2003, fleeing violence, he overstayed a tourist visa in the United States. About ten years later, he and his girlfriend had a son, a U.S. citizen identified in court documents as M.

After being detained by authorities in 2019, Mr. Wilkinson sought to avoid deportation under a provision of a federal statute that allows immigration judges to grant relief to people whose removal would cause great hardship to a spouse, parent or child. (Mr. Wilkinson met the law’s other criteria: having been present in the United States for at least 10 consecutive years, being of good moral character, and not having been convicted of certain crimes.)

An immigration judge ruled that M. had severe asthma and that Mr Wilkinson provided him with financial and emotional support. The judge also found that M. had been struggling with behavioral problems since Mr Wilkinson’s detention, when the boy was 7.

But the judge ruled that these circumstances did not amount to the kind of hardship that would justify an exception to the usual rules. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed this ruling.

Mr. Wilkinson sought review before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which ruled that it had no jurisdiction under a 1996 law that stripped federal appeals courts of much of their jurisdiction over deportation rulings.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for five justices, said a change in the law allowed appeals courts to consider “questions of law.” She writes that the immigration judge’s application of the legal standard to the facts concerning M. met this requirement.

“Mixed questions of law and fact, even if primarily factual, fall within the statutory definition of ‘questions of law,’” Judge Sotomayor wrote, allowing appellate review.

Pure questions of fact are another matter, she wrote. “Thus,” she wrote, an immigration judge’s findings “regarding the credibility, severity of a family member’s medical condition, or the level of financial support currently provided by a noncitizen remain unreviewable. Only the question of whether those established facts meet the legal suitability standard is subject to judicial review.”

Justices Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Sotomayor in Wilkinson v. Garland, No. 22-666. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson voted with the majority, but did not adopt the reasoning.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said. that the majority had defied immigration laws by treating almost all questions as legal issues subject to review by appellate courts.

Such a reading of the immigration laws, he wrote, “would be the equivalent of a city council passing an ordinance banning all dogs from a park, except all dogs weighing less than 125 pounds.” Or the municipality adopts an ordinance that prohibits everyone from cycling without a helmet, but then adopts an exception for all persons under the age of 90.”